My idea is that the right price for a cup of coffee is ten cents.
Of course, ten-cent coffee was usually pretty bad.
But the great thing in my lifetime is the decline (inflation-adjusted) in the price of beer and the incredible improvement in the quality of beer. Now there's hedonic valuation. You can get a beer that is four times as good as it used to be for $1.00 (supermarket price), and the 25 cents you would pay for a bottle of crummy beer in 1967 is, inflation-adjusted, $1.31 now. So things are, hedonically, one-fifth the price--when it comes to beer.
Coffee, on the other hand, is by my estimation only three times better than in 1967, so a 30-cent cup (1967 cents) ought to cost $1.57. Actually you can get something good for about that price in some places. So hedonically, coffee is break-even.
Women, it seems to me, are greatly improved since 1967. That is, in 1967, only about 5% of women aged 23 were stunningly beautiful. Now about 85% of them are. <g> |
